Opening next week at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is Lisette Model and Her Successors, featuring work from the last century’s most significant photographers. Lisette Model (1901–1983) was a woman whose images and eloquent teachings influenced her students Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, and a host of others, many of whom went on to leave their own marks on American photographic history.

Model, born in Vienna, arrived in New York in 1938, a few years after Alexey Brodovitch art director of Harper’s Bazaar, and like him, had resided in France for some fifteen years before settling permanently in the United States. An influx of Continental artistic impulses increasingly pervaded the cultural milieu of New York in the 1940s and 1950s, which may have made it difficult for some photographers to find their own voices. For her part, Model embraced the life and values of the American artistic vanguard, while remaining always and to everyone who knew her somehow different, just slightly mysterious and completely unique.

This exhibition consists of 145 vintage photographs by 13 artists: Diane Arbus, Bruce Cratsley, Elaine Ellman, Larry Fink, Peter Hujar, Raymond Jacobs, Ruth Kaplan, Leon Levinstein, Eva Rubinstein, Gary Schneider, Rosalind Solomon, and Bruce Weber.

Lisette Model and Her Successors
Tuesday, September 1—Sunday, December, 13 2009
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
Lower Lake Road, South Hadley, Massachusetts
(413) 538-2245

Click here to purchase your copy of Lisette Model from Aperture.

Watch an excerpt of Eirik Johnson’s talk last May on his new book Sawdust Mountain at Aperture Gallery. In this clip, Johnson tells the story of Missy, an eighty-eight-year old artist who has spent all her life in the Washington state area and grand-daughter of one of the first white settlers in the Northwest. Missy represents the connections between the past, present and future of this changing region.

Sawdust Mountain is a culmination of four years photographing throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. A Seattle native, Johnson focuses in this book on the tenuous relationship between industries such as timber and salmon, reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support. Johnson reveals a landscape imbued with an uncertain future—no longer the region of boomtowns built upon the riches of massive old growth forests, at a turning point to protect its natural resources extensively exploited over the last century. Through a poetic approach, Sawdust Mountain records a region affected by historic economic complexities and, by extension, aspects of our fraught relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century.

Johnson also discussed his previous photography projects that lead to Sawdust Mountain and read a poem by David Guterson included in the book, while going through his images before answering questions from the audience.

You can watch the talk in its entirety, divided in three different clips, on the multimedia section of our website or by clicking on the links below:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

View related limited-edition print and portfolio.

For the first time ever, the cover of Aperture features a drawing, not a photograph, as the cover image. In issue #196, these vibrant abstract works from William Eggleston are published for the first time and showcase a rarely seen part of the artist’s career. Also featured is a selection of William Klein’s work from 1956, soon-to-be-published in Rome (Aperture, October 2009), an examination of the role of monuments in photography by Mark Alice Durant, a review of ICP’s Year of Fashion from Holly Brubach, and Luc Sante‘s investigation into the early-twentieth-century photographic postcard. Philip Lopate also examines Sally Gall‘s new images of insects, Rob Hornstra documents less-than-fortunate Russians, photographer Gerald Slota and playwright Neil LaBute collaborate to create some very chilling scenarios, Debbie Fleming Caffery documents her native Louisiana, and more.

Pick up your copy at newsstands nationwide, buy the issue here, or click here to subscribe to Aperture.

Reader challenge: What exact medium does William Eggleston use to make these drawings?

Opening this weekend at the Austin Museum of Art, A Couple Ways of Doing Something features Chuck Close’s intimate portraits of leading contemporary artists, paired with Bob Holman’s witty and beautifully typeset poems. The daguerreotypes offer an extremely revealing study of the subjects, extending the hyperrealist tradition of portraiture for which Close is renowned. In keeping with the exhibition title, Chuck Close has included examples of his other works taken from each daguerreotype in a variety of media, including photogravures, digital pigment prints, and large-scale tapestries. In an additional departure for Close, many of the portraits were produced in tandem with praise poems by Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club.  Together, they form composite portraits of their subjects—an influential and highly creative circle of friends and colleagues—from Andres Serrano to Cindy Sherman. An opening reception will be held Friday, August 21 from 6:00 to 9:00, open only to museum members. The museum will screen a film about the artist and his peers in early September as well as a Slide Lecture by Art Historian Richard Shiff early November.

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something
Saturday, August 22—Sunday, November 8, 2009
Austin Museum of Art
823 Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas
(512) 495-9224

Film: Portrait of Close’s Creative Circle
Thursday, September 10, 2009  7:00 pm
In her film Chuck Close (2007), director Marion Cajori examines the appeal of the human face by interviewing the artist and his circle of creative friends, including Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kiki Smith. Film introduction by Austin photographer George Krause.

Slide Lecture: Realism of Low Resolution
Thursday, November 5, 2009  7:00 pm
Art Historian Richard Shiff will put the portraits of Chuck Close in context with the slide lecture Realism of Low Resolution: Chuck Close (and Others).

Click here to purchase your copy of A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, published by Aperture.

Check out the latest press on Aperture’s new and upcoming releases!

Coming Soon the new edition of the Robert Adams classic, Summer Nights, Walking as featured in the September issue of Visionaire magazine.

Click here to view Lyle Rexer’s The Edge of Vision.

Click here to view Dan Winters’ Periodical Photographs.

Coinciding with the exhibition opening at Gagosian Gallery on September 15, Aperture will release Sally Mann’s latest monograph, Proud Flesh this fall. Her latest body of work is focused primarily on her husband and their thirty-nine year relationship, in the fashion of male artists whose female lovers serve as muses. The black-and-white photographs are psychologically intense and emotionally evocative and honest. Jörg Colberg of Concientious features some of Mann’s reflections on her work, click here to read. Aperture previously published At Twelve and Immediate Family, and is proud to present a third title from one of America’s most renowned photographers.

As the son of pioneer photographer Edward Weston, Brett Weston has made his own mark in the field as witnessed by a recent show at the Santa Barbara Museum this summer, spanning his nearly seventy year career. Brett Weston’s brilliance as a photographic visionary and master-printer is well known. A maker of luminous and lasting works of photographic art, he worked in the darkroom from the very early hours of the morning whenever he was not photographing, but he made very few large-format exhibition quality prints.  Shortly before his death Brett Weston burned many of his negatives, asserting that he alone could print from them as intended.  In 1991-1992, when Aperture published a revised edition of his classic Voyage of the Eye, Brett selected a number of  these exhibition prints and  authorized Aperture to sell them  to support the foundation. In honor of the recent restrospective show at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art,  Aperture is pleased to offer a selection of these remaining prints to our collectors. All bear the intense beauty and masterful craftsmanship of one of the photography’s greatest artists. Each  unique gelatin-silver print is made and signed by Brett Weston and dry mounted on archival board. Inquiries can be sent to prints@aperture.org.

Slideluck Potshow united the photography community at Canoe Studios last week in New York City for a unique evening with a potluck-style dinner followed by a showcase of artist’s photographic slideshows. Both emerging and established artists were represented, including Aperture’s Michael Wolf and his series The Transparent City, which takes an in depth look at the environment and its inhabitants of urban Chicago as well as Aperture’s Brian Ulrich, showing his newest series Dark Stores. The non-profit organization, Slideluck Potshow is devoted to building and strengthening community around food and art.  In addition, it is their objective to promote public appreciation of the visual arts and to provide art education opportunities to school-age children in New York City.  Slideshow events are now taking place in about forty cities globally:  from Stockholm, to São Paulo, to San Francisco. Read the Flavorwire report on the event here.

Click here for a schedule of upcoming Slideluck Potshow events.

Click here to purchase your copy of Michael Wolf’s The Transparent City.

Click here to purchase a limited-edition print from Michael Wolf.

Click here to purchase your copy of Brian Ulrich’s MP3 Volume I.

Click here to purchase a limited-edition print from Brian Ulrich.

Check out photos of the event here.

NYC Green Carts are mobile fruit and vegetable stands initiated by the Mayor’s Fund for New York City, the New York City Department of Health, and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. These independently operated carts bring fresh fruit and vegetables to underserved New York City neighborhoods across all five boroughs. In the fight against obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related health problems, the Green Carts offer New Yorkers more options for buying nutritious food, while simultaneously creating about a thousand new business and job opportunities. Aperture and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund have commissioned five emerging photographers: LaToya Ruby Frazier, Thomas Holton, Gabriele Stabile, Will Steacy, and Shen Wei to chronicle this remarkable program.

Through this partnership, Aperture reaffirms its founding commitment to explore social issues through the medium of photography and to provide a platform for emerging artists. Aperture will publish eight full-page public service announcements in Aperture magazine, and curate an exhibition to be installed at a local exhibition venue in September 2011 as the culmination of the two-year initiative. The exhibition will showcase the pieces featured in Aperture magazine, along with additional images and commentaries by the photographers and project partners. Look for the first announcement in the winter 2009 issue of Aperture, which hits newsstands late November.

Visit nyc.gov for more information on this ground-breaking project.

The International Center of Photography unveils Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video, showcasing over 100 recent works by 34 artists from 18 countries — all on the general subject of “fashion” (and costume, clothing, disguise, gender and culture) as a part of ICP year-long investigation of fashion photography. The curatorial team includes Vince Aletti, Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, Carol Squiers and curatorial assistant Judy Ditner.

Participating artists: Yto Barrada, Valérie Belin, Thorsten Brinkmann, Cao Fei, Olga Chernysheva, Nathalie Djurberg, Stan Douglas, Kota Ezawa, Jacqueline Hassink, Hu Yang, Miyako Ishiuchi, Kimsooja, Silvia Kolbowski, Jeremy Kost, Barbara Kruger, Richard Learoyd, Kalup Linzy, Tanya Marcuse, Anne Morgenstern, Wangechi Mutu, Grace Ndiritu, Alice O’Malley, David Rosetzky, Martha Rosler, Julika Rudelius, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Hank Willis Thomas, Mickalene Thomas, Milagros de la Torre, Janaina Tschäpe, Pinar Yolaçan and Zhou Tao.

Exhibition on view:
Friday, October 2, 2009–Sunday, January 17, 2010

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas, New York
(212) 857-0000